462 
SPANISH TOWN. 
tables, and illustrates their depredations on our canes. 
There are royal chambers in the hillock-building 
Termites, surrounded by a countless number of 
others of different shapes and dimensions, all of them 
being either arched cells or galleries : these open 
into each other, or communicate by passages wide 
enough for the soldiers and attendants, of whom great 
numbers are necessary and always in waiting. These 
apartments lead away to the magazines and nurseries. 
The magazines are chambers of clay, and are always 
well filled with provisions, which to the naked eye 
consist of raspings of wood, and of plants which they 
have destroyed, but are found by the microscope to 
be principally gums and inspissated vegetable juices. 
These are thrown together in little masses, some of 
which are finer than others, and resemble the sugar 
about preserved fruits; others are like crystallised 
drops ; one kind are quite transparent, another are 
like amber, a third brown and clear, and another 
quite opaque, just as we see ordinary gums are. 
The magazines are intermingled with the nurseries, 
which are buildings totally different from the rest of 
the apartments. They are composed entirely of 
wooden materials cemented together. Smeathman 
calls them nurseries because they are invariably 
occupied by the eggs and young ones, which appear 
at first in the shape of those called labourers, white 
as snow. We may perceive in this description of a 
colony of Termites, the purpose for which they esta- 
blish themselves in our cane-fields. They are there 
abundantly supplied with those inspissated juices, 
which resemble the sugar of preserved fruits on 
